Ethical Issues in Nano-Medicine and Enhancement : an Overview
Dr Donald Bruce
Society, Religion and Technology Project, Church of Scotland
121 George Street, Edinburgh EH2 4YN, Scotland, UK Tel. 0131 240 2250 Web www.srtp.org.uk
Nanotechnologies offer great promise for medicine, much of it still a long way off. But even at this
early stage, the recent experience of GM food and the ongoing debate over stem cells is already
focusing attention on question of ethics. The scientific community is aware that it is dealing with a
more sceptical public than a generation ago. So when the EC European Network of Excellence on
nanobiotechnology, Nano2Life was formed, a board was set up so that the ethical, social and legal
implications keep pace with the emerging scientific developments. This SRT paper is drawn from
some of its initial work,1 and from an article written for NanoToday.2 Focused ethical programmes
like NanoBioRaise are also beginning. We can forget grey goo, but already there are signs that some
challenging ethical issues could be raised. Some touch on issues familiar in bioethics. Some are more
particular. Before considering these, some basic contextual questions should be considered.
What drives nanotechnology?
The first problem is the gap between research and rhetoric. This makes nanotechnologies vulnerable
to overclaiming, both potential benefits and harms. The frequent use of the word ‘will’ about
unknowable future outcomes expresses an ‘article of faith’ about science, generating a false
impression of an inevitability of progress which may not be real. Equally we should be careful not to
place premature weight on speculative risks ahead of evidence. Beware of false prophets, either way.
Secondly, it is a common misconception that technology is neutral. On the contrary, a technology
reflects values and goals of the society within which it emerges and, in turn, it may alter the values
and aspirations of that society. In a sceptical climate of public opinion, sensitive areas of technology
might be seen as a social contract.3 A technology would be welcomed if the values and goals of the
inventor are close to those of wider society, and if the invention correctly anticipates what society
wishes, as with the mobile phone. On the other hand, if the inventor is remote, the aims do not
correlate with the values and goals of the society, or if the invention is unfamiliar or risky, there can
be a disjunction, as occurred when UK consumers rejected imported, unlabelled GM soya and maize
products to the UK, having accepted other labeled GM products where they had a choice.
Whose values will nanobiotechnology express? Are its novel ideas a product of widely shared values,
or only of a powerful elite? Some values, ideologies and beliefs which may influence it include :
 The scientific value of free, curiosity-driven research.
 Economic growth, jobs and competitiveness
 Quality of life, variously defined – e.g. personal affluence, consumer choice, environmental goals,
social justice, global health and poverty, spiritual goals
 Compassion, motivated by the desire to alleviate human suffering.
 Medical ‘success’ seeking a technical solution to any condition, as an obligation
 Different religious belief systems.
 Transhumanism, driving human evolution by physically changing humans.
Two critical areas about which such world views make implicit or explicit assumptions are the notion
of progress and the concept of the human being.
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Social issues of Nanomedicine - what do we mean by Progress?
A common view in scientific and political circles is a belief in "progress" through technology to
improve the human condition in its widest sense. It is confident of human skill and ingenuity to
overcome any problems. The currently dominant economic model frames nanotechnologies in terms
of their capacity for wealth generation. Another widely held view, however, sees intervention
explicitly balanced by care for our fellow humans and attention to the impacts of our innovations on
the environment. Interventions are made which respect certain limits defined by the human condition
and our finite environment. Technology is not the sole engine of progress but a tool which remains at
the service of humanity, not the other way round. Lastly, there are those for whom progress is entirely
personal and not for the state to dictate.
At this stage nanomedicine is driven by a “technology push”, which has a social dimension.
Functions and properties that can be measured or manipulated tend to put a steer on what applications
are promoted. It is argued that prototypes produced in the laboratory already co-produce ethics with
the artefact.4 Thus there may already be implicit ethics in practices within the research community.
What are the needs which nanobiotechnology is assumed to meet? Who should define these as needs,
or judge whether the expense of research is better spent on other ends? This is especially relevant to
high tech medicine in a global context of health needs which often require simpler solutions. How are
such judgements to be made democratic accountable at a meaningful stage of development?
Foresighting very uncertain technologies is notoriously difficult, and carries the risk that early public
engagement may promote either public assurance or public panic over the wrong issues.
Nanomedicine applied in non-medical contexts
Procedures developed in an acceptable medical context may pose ethical questions if applied
non-medically. For example, nanotechnology may assist the repair of sensory organs or provide
intimate control from the brain to prosthetic limbs for accident victims or the disabled. Should these
devices be adapted to extend sight into the infrared for better night vision when driving, or to make
the able-bodied super-able? Should cell repair nano-interventions seek to extend human life span? A
useful distinction exists between medical and non-medical interventions in the human person. Thus
the European Convention for Human Rights and Biomedicine opposes sex selection for social
reasons and allows it only to avoid serious sex-related hereditary disease. A related issue concerns
surveillance and military uses. Nanotechnology devices implanted in the body to monitor and adjust
blood sugar levels in diabetics are more problematical if used for the surveillance of citizens or
military applications. Inevitably, there are grey areas, but mechanisms are needed to identify potential
crossovers at an early stage, and to ensure that nanotechnologies devised in a strict medical context
are not applied to non-medical contexts without restriction.
Special Issues about Nanomedicine
The ability to monitor and intervene at a cellular or molecular level may fall foul of the complexity of
the system. Nanomedicine may enable rapid read-outs of our whole genome or of our body's levels of
everything imaginable, but what does all that information mean? What now is a well person, when we
have so much unsuspected data about our bodies? This raises familiar issues of genetic information,
who accesses it and how it is handled. ‘Lab-on-a-chip’ analysis may mean my visit to the doctor with
a cough may now also tell me I have a susceptibility to colon cancer with little prospect of cure.
Knowing all the information which nanomedicine looks to provide is not necessarily a good thing.
The powerful targeted therapeutic possibilities for nanomedicine can also create potential for
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powerful harms, if the precision becomes wrongly applied or if it has more than just the desired effect.
The notion of bottom-up construction based on living systems, either by mimicking or by
incorporating components from living systems, raises issues about hybrid devices which interface
human and machine, and what with priorities we build. A Lego set mentality should not assume the
right to tinker around at this reduced level. We cannot know how the changed pieces fit together if we
lose sight of the whole human. Health risks arise in the use of nanoparticles in biological systems.
How precautionary we should be over uncertain risks which may take a long time to assess?
This brief survey has mapped some of the ethical and social topography of the uncharted lands which
nanotechnologies may offer to medicine, and posed many questions for debate. How as societies we
seek answers as these technologies emerge will be of crucial importance. Scientists and clinicians in
nanomedicine owe it to themselves and to wider society to reflect on them, so that the right benefits
may be achieved with justice, and retaining our humanity in all its rich diversity.
Nano-Enhancement and the Nature of being Human
The convergence of nanotechnologies with info-bio-and cognitive technologies provokes a profound
moral question. Should nanotechnology make humans better, as in nanomedicine, or should we use it
to make ‘better’ humans, by manipulating our capacities beyond medical conditions? Traditional
presuppositions hold that there are moral or societal bounds which restrain what may be technically
feasible in intervening in the human condition. These limits are drawn from the insights of the
religious and cultural traditions, philosophy and theology, the arts and humanities, and the social
sciences. These are challenged by transhumanist belief that humans are destined to go beyond our
current biological limitations. The US NBIC report was enthusiastic at this transhumanist prospect. A
European expert group urged submitting enhancement goals to wider social scrutiny, if our humanity
is not to be redefined by a techno-logic driven primarily by technical and economic feasibility.5 6 This
suggests we may need to draw lines to limit some technological possibilities but promote others.
Many conceptual models of the human being exist. Depending on the context, we might be a bag of
genes, a conscious mind, a spiritual and bodily being, a set of capacities restrained by natural form,
and so on. The secular dream of human enhancement sees the human condition is seen as something
which we can manipulate to our own design, if we think we can do better. This assumes a functional
understanding of the human being, which conflicts with more holistic understandings. From my
Christian perspective, radical physical enhancement seems illusory because it is likely to miss the
point about our certain basic features of our humanity. Firstly, instead of seeing life as a gift to be
handled well, as in traditional morality, if human beings are primarily functions to be enhanced, our
humanity becomes something accepted only in so far as it meets with our specification. The notion of
performing a technical fix on human characteristics carries the risk of mistaking the worth of human
beings with limited notions of functional perfection. It begs two questions. Amid the complexity and
interdependences of the human body and social and cultural variations, how do we know what is truly
an enhancement? Who will lay down what is an enhancement and what is ‘being left behind’?
From this functional understanding of humans, it is a relative short conceptual step to resurrecting
20th century eugenic agendas, which accepted others in society only if they were seen as functionally
‘fit’. Human enhancement is inherently socially divisive because an injustice lies at its heart. The
prospects it holds out are for those who have the money, potential and access, but are not for those
who cannot reach it. The concept of radical human enhancements might be more believable if its
proponents declared that they would do no applications for those already rich and advantaged, but
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would work only to offer improvements to enable people at the bottom of the heap to enjoy the
privileges of the proponents. But that does not seem to be the agenda.
Thirdly, improving isolated individual characteristics misses important things in the account of the
whole human being. To focus on humans in terms of functions we should tweak in order to improve
seems an impoverished view of humanity. The assumption is that to be that little bit faster, taller,
blonder, smarter, more retentive, more musical, or whatever, we are somehow happier and better as
humans. For most people, these aspects of life are probably not what they equate with happiness
because, in themselves, they do not ultimately give satisfaction in life. Beyond a certain basic point of
physical survival and necessity, what matters most to humans are not functional and material things
but the relational, the creative and the spiritual. As Jesus said, what shall it profit someone if they gain
the whole world but lose their soul? It prompts the question of what is so unsatisfactory about life as
we know it, that we need to enhance ourselves technologically to make life better.
Enhancement elevates a proper celebration of individual creativity and achievement out of proportion.
The western cult of celebrity focuses on a few ‘perfect’ achievers, but presents a very fragile view of
human being as individuals who are acceptable only while their success lasts. It has no place for the
sports star whose body wears out prematurely because of an extreme focus on a few bodily functions
or the has-been rock star. Enhancement is apt to exalt youth and beauty over age and normalcy. It
glorifies the winners but has no satisfactory account of the underclass who do not reach the mark.
More poignantly, it offers no proper account of the role of unresolved suffering and failure in the
human life. In Christian thinking and spirituality, the reality of a person's character lies more in what
they do with their ‘lot’ in life, and less in the lot itself. Even though Christian principles have been the
motivation for very large efforts towards the relief of suffering, the ability to cope with unrelieved
suffering has always remained a key concept, framed by the twin perspectives of eternal life beyond
the present and of God's own suffering alongside humanity in Jesus Christ.
Lastly, again from a Christian point of view, the discourse about enhancement seems misplaced
because it misses the point about what needs changing in our humanity. Our deepest problems are less
in any concepts of physical limitation than in our moral, relational or spiritual failings. What is wrong
with the human condition is not a lack of strength, longevity, intelligence, beauty, athleticism, art,
science or even education, but in the moral and spiritual shortcomings of humanity, individually and
collectively, as the world’s ongoing conflicts show. However much we enhanced ourselves, inherent
human failings would remain because they lie beyond technical fixes, but require spiritual solutions.
References
1
Bruce, D. M. (2006), Nano-2-Life Ethics A Scoping Paper on Ethical and Social Issues in
Nanobiotechnologies, in ‘Nano-Bio-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Nanobiotechnology, Ach, J. S. and Siep, L.
(eds), Muenster Bioethik-Studien, Lit Verlag, Muenster.
2 Bruce, D. M. (2006), The Question of Ethics, Nano Today, vol.9, No.1, Feb.2006, pp.58-59.
3 Bruce, D. M. (2002), A Social Contract for Biotechnology - Shared Visions for Risky Technologies?, J.
Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, vol.15, pp.279-289.
4 Rip, Arie, Second Order Ethics, A note to Nano2Life Ethics Board, 2 September 2004
5 Roco and Bainbridge, (eds.) (2002), Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performances, US
National Science Foundation report.
6 Nordmann, A. (ed.) (2004), Converging Technologies and the Natural, Social and Cultural World, report of a
European Commission expert group.
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